Conventional service delivery platforms include those directly and entirely dependent on physical infrastructure (access network inside/outside plant), such as high speed Internet and commercial Ethernet services; those that are partially dependent on infrastructure (Hybrid Fiber Coax delivery of legacy digital video services are a hybrid, delivering digital video content by direct placement on the HFC network, while using existing DOCSIS infrastructure for delivery of control signaling, note that DOCSIS is not just control signaling, it is the key technology for high speed internet over cable), and those that depend on access network infrastructure for delivery (such as wireline telephone services and web-based services including over-the-top video.) Note that even if the physical infrastructure is hybrid fiber cable (HFC), the delivery platform is still dependent on the physical infrastructure.
Premise devices (such as cable modems, set-top boxes, telephony adapters, gateways, subscriber-owned equipment, and the like) ultimately leverage the subscriber's physical network connection (generally a drop connection on an HFC network), but rely on numerous provider endpoints to deliver a full suite of services (such as CMTS, various video service platforms, telephony switches, and an array of back-office systems that are usually not directly visible to subscribers but are critical path elements nonetheless.)
Each of these service platforms (whether directly visible to subscribers or part of the back-office environment) are accountable in different ways to a wide range of internal organizations for engineering design (initial configuration management, architecture and engineering, engineering rules, network simulation, costing, etc.) and operational management (performance assessment/monitoring, repair, and to an extent, ongoing configuration changes).
For example, each HFC network Node has a network identifier or name symbol (this varies amongst different companies) on which periodic measures of plant performance are reported; the recipients for these reports are various levels within the field operations and engineering organization. Similarly, equipment that is not directly attached to access infrastructure (such as a provisioning server for high speed internet platform) is named (perhaps its IP address or network name) and cataloged for the purpose of inventory, operational monitoring and management.